Parenting While Food Insecure:

Links Between Adult Food Insecurity, Parenting

Aggravation & Children’s Behaviors

DR. KEVIN A. GEE, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

MINAHIL ASIM, PH.D. CANDIDATE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS

Study Overview

We investigated the parenting aggravation levels of parents who experienced food insecurity in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-9

Food insecurity : “…[when] the availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or the ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways is

limited or uncertain.” (Wunderlich & Norwood, 2006, p. 43)

Adult Food Insecurity

Parental Aggravation

Adult Food Insecurity

Parental Aggravation

Children’s Executive Functioning

We also explored the extent to which such aggravation may be responsible for the link between food insecurity and children’s behaviors

Cognitive outcomes

Food insecurity

Non-nutritional pathways

Family level process effects • Parental depression, anxiety, antisocial

tendencies, poor self control (Whitaker, Phillips, & Orzol, 2006)

• Low structure and nurturance (Belsky et al., 2010)

• Stress due to poverty (Rose-Jacobs et al., 2008)

• Material hardship (Gershoff et al., 2007)

Nutritional & Health pathways

Iron deficiency & anemia (Park et al., 2009)

Obesity (Ashiabi & O’Neal, 2008)

Key Study Contributions

• We focus on adult food insecurity. We more precisely pinpoint food insecurity’s effects to an adult in the home.

• We investigate an outcome that has received less attention: children’s executive functioning (EF)

• Children’s EF

• Inhibitory control: ability to “resist a strong inclination to do one thing and instead to do what is most appropriate” (Tourangeau et

al., 2012)

• Attentional focus: ability to “focus attention on cues in the environment that are relevant to the task in hand” (Tourangeau et

al., 2015)

• A critical foundation for their cognitive development particularly after age 5, a time when children can be especially vulnerable to food insecurity

Which Adults are Considered Food Insecure?

Food Secure

If responded Often or Sometimes to up to 2 items

Food Insecure

If responded Often or Sometimes to 3 or more items

US Adult Food Security

Survey Module

https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/8279/ad2012.pdf

Source: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx

Source: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics/

“Along with being food insecure you’re exactly that…insecure,” Izquierdo said.

Source: http://servingfoodsolutions.com/the-problem/economics/personal-story-barbie-izqiuerdo/Image: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20140514_Hunger-fighter_determined_to_share_story.html

“It brings about all these emotions on how you’re

not good enough, how people are superior to you,

how it’s like no matter what you do you’re looked at

differently because of your need.”

Children’s cognitive outcomes

Economic Pressures(e.g., Food insecurity

Housing Stability)

Family Stress Model (FSM) (Masarik & Conger, 2017) Psychological Distress

(Parental Depression, Anxiety & Stress)

Financial Strain

Compromised Parenting Practices

Food Insecurity & Parents:

What We Know

Mothers from food insecure homes can experience:

• Depression and psychosis spectrum disorders (Melchior et al., 2009)

• Heightened maternal anxiety and depression (Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2007; Whitaker et al., 2006)

• Parental irritability and anger (Hamelin et al., 1999)

• Higher parenting stress levels (Huang et al., 2010)

Mothers viewed their role as parents more negatively irrespective of whether they were from severe or very severe food insecure households (Powers, 2013)

Adult Food Insecurity

Parental Outcomes

Parenting as a Mechanism

• Parenting stress among low-income parents mediates the association between household food insecurity and children’s externalizing and internalizing behaviors in children older than 3 (Huang et al., 2010).

• Parenting stress, warmth and depression mediates household food insecurity’s effect on children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors (Slack & Yoo, 2005).

Adult Food Insecurity

Parental Outcomes

Children’s Outcomes

Current Study

How does food insecurity, as experienced by parents, relate to their own levels of parenting aggravation?

Does parenting aggravation mediate the relationship between adult food insecurity and children's behavioral outcomes (executive functioning and behavior problems)?

Dataset & Sample

Coarsened Exact Matching

(CEM)

Baseline characteristics

(Spring of Kindergarten)

After Matching

n = 470 Food Insecuren = 1600 Food Secure

Sample of Observed Adults (Spring of First Grade)

n = 1160 Food Insecuren = 11160 Food Secure

Baseline Measures Used for Matching

Food stamps (past 12 months)# of places child lived since birth

Access to medical careParental Income, Education, Employment Status

# of siblingsRacial and Ethnic Background

Key Measures

Measure Type Domain Measures

Outcomes Children’s Executive Functioning (EF)

• Attentional Focus and Inhibitory Control based on the CBQ (α=.87; α=.86)

Predictors Adult Food Insecurity (10 item USDA survey)

• Adult food insecurity status (α=.89)• 12-month recall

Mediator Parental Aggravation • Four questions on the Parental Stress Index (PSI). Aggravation in Parenting Scale (α=.71)

Controls Parent • Parental SES (after baseline), depression, school involvement

Child • Gender, disability status

Parenting Aggravation

Used in studies on immigrant families (Yu & Singh, 2012) and parents of children with disabilities (Schieve et al., 2011)

How often they felt it was true (completely, mostly, somewhat, not at all):

(1) Being a parent is harder than I thought it would be

(2) {CHILD} does things that really bother me

(3) I find myself giving up more of my to meet {CHILD’s} need more that I ever expected

(4) I often feel angry with {CHILD}

Analytic Strategy

Mediation Analysis (MacKinnon, 2008)

Incorporated survey weights; SE’s based on Taylor Linearization; Missing Data (MLMV)

0.172*** -0.128***

0.032

Indirect Effect (a x b)-0.022*

Attentional Focus

*p < .05; ***p < .001

0.172*** -0.190***

0.052

Indirect Effect (a x b)-0.033***

Inhibitory Control

***p < .001

Recap & Limitations

Recap

• Adults who were food insecure had heighted parenting aggravation.

• Food insecurity as experienced by adults does not directly relate to children’s outcomes; rather, it indirectly relates to children’s outcomes through the mechanism of parenting aggravation.

Limitations

• Matching helps reduce bias due to observables

• Multitude of other mediators and pathways, especially those that remained unobserved and thus untestable in our mediation models.

Implications

• Beyond the nutritional dynamics of food insecurity, food insecurity is a complex family microsystem-level phenomenon influencing behaviors of parents and their children

• Given our findings, we suggest strengthening parenting supports to reduce parenting stress onset by food insecurity

• Vulnerable parent groups such as single mothers from low-income backgrounds

• Supporting food insecure parents, not just by stabilizing their access to food, but with broader psycho-social support may ultimately have benefits for both parents and their children.

Acknowledgements

Thank YouKevin Gee: kagee@ucdavis.edu

Twitter: @kevingee888Minahil Asim: masim@ucdavis.edu

This work is supported through a 2015-7 Young Scholars Award from the Foundation for Child Development (FCD)